My Brother is a Teenage Werewolf

Remus Lupin Comes Home

Remus Lupin Comes Home

Set just before As Potter is to Snape begins. 

***

Remus shut his eyes tightly against the brightness of the sun shining through the dingy window of his room at the Hog's Head. He felt terrible. His head was pounding and the muscles in his neck and shoulders were sore and tense. All he wanted was to roll over and try and get a few more hours of sleep. Sleep had become such a scarce thing lately and he just wanted to savor it a bit more before he took off again.

Suddenly, Remus felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Sleep completely gone from his mind. Someone, or something, was in the room with him.

In one fluid motion, Remus sat up straight, his wand already in his hand from where he kept it underneath his pillow and pointed it at the corner of the room, a curse on his lips in that same second.

Fortunately, before he could utter such a curse, he recognized the person sitting in a chair by the window.

"Sleeping in, I see. Did you have a rough night, Remus?"

Remus sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed, but he didn't get up. Instead, he leaned forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees and dropped his head.

"What are you doing here, Dad?" he asked quietly.

"Isn't it obvious?" Dumbledore stated plainly, "I've come to bring my son home."

Remus shook his head, "Dad-"

"You look ill my boy," Dumbledore interrupted. "You haven't been taking your potion?"

Though he phrased it like a question, Remus knew that he wasn't asking so much as stating what he already knew was truth. Remus glanced up at him but the sadness he saw in the old man's eyes had him looking away again.

"It's not like I stay in one place long enough to brew it anyway. Besides, we both know that I don't have a hope of brewing it properly without Severus," he added lamely.

"Who would have gladly continued to brew it for you as long as you wanted."

"I know that," Remus said with a nod of his head.

"What have you been doing while you've been away?" Dumbledore asked and Remus dropped his head even further if that was possible.

"I'd rather not say," he murmured. He heard Dumbledore sigh.

"Remus, you need to give up this search for revenge. Killing Fenrir Greyback will not-"

"How's Severus doing? And Mum?" Remus asked, changing the subject to a safer topic.

Dumbledore studied the younger man for a long moment. He took in the way his light brown hair, already flecked with grey for someone so young, stuck up in odd angles from where he had been sleeping. He wore a tattered pair of grey pajama pants and a sleeveless undershirt. It was the same sort of clothing he'd worn to bed for as long as Dumbledore had known him and if it weren't for the mustache the man now sported, Dumbledore would almost believe that he was the same fifteen-year-old that had come to live with him and Minerva all those years ago.

But he wasn't. That boy, though his life had already been unfairly hard, had had such a high spirit. He laughed and found merriment in almost everything. He was every bit as mischievous as the other boys in his friend group, though in his defense, he did try and talk them out of some of their worse schemes.

The man now in front of him, had hardened in his adult life. He'd lost so much. He'd seen war and true evil in his life, and that wasn't something that one just recovered from so easily. Dumbledore wished that he could have shielded both of his boys from this fate, but he knew that it did no good to dwell on what he could have done differently.